I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

It's more likely that a few people just fundamentally screwed up than a large team of people conspired to defraud the scientific community.

This is why I'm skeptical of any game changer type of published research. The vetting process of the journals is insufficient nowadays, a lot of hogwash gets through the editorial process. I believe Ars has covered this issue extensively in the past.

The influence or perceived promise of "secondary gain" in the stem cell field has been a driving issue for a long time, with the attendant blurring of the lines and now suspicions of outright fraud.

As an active cardiovascular researcher, our "poster child" for this scenario is finally coming under the scrutiny that many of us have been asking for over the past 15 years. Go take a look at Retraction Watch and the Anversa story. Depressing and for many of us, all too predictable.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

It still may not have been deliberate falsification. It sounds like her record keeping may have been pretty bad, too, so if she took the wrong cells at one point, that would mess things up. There are also certain cases where aerosolized cells from one strain can contaminate and take over the other cell lines. Unless you are looking very carefully, you may not notice until it is too late.

This happened when HeLa cells were first in use. A lot of research had to be redone because experiments they thought they were doing on X cell line were actually HeLa cells.

Nonetheless, this is why I adore science as a process. If it isn't testable or repeatable: it's just not the real deal. The scientific process worked here and the truth came out.

Publishing and peer review of articles require a certain amount of implicit trust in the integrity of the submitting authors. I think that's unavoidable so I do not agree with anyone blaming this on the journal. Peer review was never intended to be a replacement for the wider scientific community doing their part to test new information. It is intended to vet the article for serious errors in methodology or interpretation, not to rigorously repeat the study to be sure no one lied.

Truth provides no such accomodation to fraudsters so when the scientific community did their part (testing for repeatability) the shenanigans get revealed sooner or later. That's as it should be

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

It still may not have been deliberate falsification. It sounds like her record keeping may have been pretty bad, too, so if she took the wrong cells at one point, that would mess things up. There are also certain cases where aerosolized cells from one strain can contaminate and take over the other cell lines. Unless you are looking very carefully, you may not notice until it is too late.

This happened when HeLa cells were first in use. A lot of research had to be redone because experiments they thought they were doing on X cell line were actually HeLa cells.

I'm not buying the idea that this was a simple error like record keeping. If I understand the original paper right, they were claiming to convert cells from tissue, not cell lines. So to have contamination be the culprit, they would have either had to have multiple instances of contamination, or they never bothered to repeat the experiments from start to finish.

I agree, some cell lines like HeLa can be a real problem in a careless lab, but this would have had to been one frighteningly contaminated lab for it to contaminate all the replicates.

This is a big news item in Japan. The main scientist, who is a woman, is under pressure for this incident. Some believe that she has been framed (much like some think that Horie Takafumi was framed), due to being "different" (ie: a famous female scientist who acted in individualistic manner).

Thus, she may, or may not have been guilty of this incident, but whether it is true or not, she's the scape-goat, due to her "un-Japanese" behaviour.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Agreed, it's odd, I suppose maybe in some cases the intention could be to drive book sales or otherwise garner some fame.

I wondered if it's ever happened that someone has fudged results in hopes that by the time anyone catches on they'll have figured out what didn't work previously.

Full disclosure: I used to work at Riken, but as a translator, not as a working scientist.

It looks really, really bad. Here's Teruhiko Wakayama, a cloning specialist at Yamanashi University and a co-author of the two Nature articles in question, quoted back in February:

Quote:

(Wakayama) agrees that the two pictures look similar but says that it may be a case of simple confusion. Wakayama, who left RIKEN during the preparation of the manuscripts, says that he sent more than 100 images to Obokata and suggests that there was confusion over which to use. He says that he is now looking into the problem.<snip>The protocol might just be complicated — even Wakayama has been having trouble reproducing the results. He and a student in his laboratory did replicate the experiment independently before publication, after being well coached by Obokata. But since he moved to Yamanashi, he has had no luck. “It looks like an easy technique — just add acid — but it’s not that easy,” he says.

Wakayama says that his independent success in reproducing Obokata’s results is enough to convince him that the technique works. He also notes that the cells produced by Obokata are the only ones known — aside from those in newly fertilized embryos — to be able to produce, for example, placentas, so could not have been substituted cells. “I did it and found it myself,” he says. “I know the results are absolutely true.”

Bolding mine.

Here's what he is saying today:

Quote:

Teruhiko Wakayama of Yamanashi University in Japan, a co-author of both papers published in Nature, said he has asked the lead author of the papers, Haruko Obokata, to retract them.

“There is no more credibility when there are such crucial mistakes,” he said in an email to The Wall Street Journal. He didn’t elaborate on what the mistakes were.

Two points:

1) If you were a co-author of a manuscript announcing one of the most amazing, sure-fire Nobel Prize-winning scientific breakthroughs in recent memory...doesn't it seem weird that he'd leave the institution before publication just as funding was sure to come pouring in?

2) It's rather odd that he thinks the results have 'no credibility' when he says he was positive the results were true because he says he 'independently reproduced the results himself' four months ago.

Also: I doubt people not living in Japan fully understand how big of a story this has been in Japan. Obokata is quite young - she's 30, only got her Ph. D. in 2011, the same year she started working at RIKEN. She had almost no major publications to her name, yet was put in charge of the Lab for Cellular Reprogramming in March 2013....and the articles in question were published just 9 months later. Not only that - Obokata had the walls of the lab painted pink and yellow. Anime character stickers decorated the walls and refrigerators. She had a pet turtle in the lab. Now throw an easy-on-the-eyes young woman? The Japanese media absolutely ate this up....and nothing is as cruel as the media (in any country) when it realizes it's been taken for a ride down the primrose path.

There's even been a small backlash at the backlash, with some saying Obokata is the victim of unfair bashing by the media.

Obogata's lab notes have also been released to he public, they're laughably bad - utter lack of documentation, childish drawings and little heart figures all over the place, etc. As Riken's internal investigators noted, the poor quality of the lab notes means it will be next to impossible for anyone to replicate her experiments.

(I'd also note that there have been a spate of articles making various suggestions as to the nature of the relationship between Obogata, Wakayama, and other researchers at the lab. I don't know if I'd say the mainstream publications in Japan are more or less 'trustworthy' than in the US / UK, but I would say they are extremely unlikely to break any major scandal involving big busines or the government, etc. Why is that important? Riken is funded almost entirely by...the Japanese government.

So who breaks the scandals? Smaller tabloids and sports dailies - they're fed the stories to break first; the major papers can now pick up the story once it's established as 'news'. For example, the Olympus scandal from a few years ago first came to light from an article published by Facta, a relatively unknown Japanese monthly specializing in finance-related investigative journalism. So when I see reports in some of these tabloids, I don't just dismiss them out of hand).

This is a big news item in Japan. The main scientist, who is a woman, is under pressure for this incident. Some believe that she has been framed (much like some think that Horie Takafumi was framed), due to being "different" (ie: a famous female scientist who acted in individualistic manner).

Thus, she may, or may not have been guilty of this incident, but whether it is true or not, she's the scape-goat, due to her "un-Japanese" behaviour.

'Un-Japanese behaviour'? Are you on drugs? With her cute pink and yellow lab walls, anime stickers, fashionable dresses and designer jewelery? In every single possible way she was portrayed as a 'typical cute young Japanese lady who, despite being female and all, made this amazing discovery'.

Her record keeping was atrocious. Her lab notebooks looked like the scribblings of a junior high school girl; all they needed was stickers of unicorns and rainbows.

I doubt Obokata or anyone at Riken set out deliberately to commit fraud...but I do think that Obokata cut serious corners in her work, and Riken, eager to use the 'cute young female scientist' angle to milk the media machine, failed to properly supervise and vet the research. Either way, Obokata put her name on the articles published in Nature. How in the world you think she's somehow being 'scapegoated' for failures in her own research is baffling.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Indeed. In the best case, you'll be eventually proved wrong. And in this case the way to disprove their results was as easy as "test the cells they said were converted." Scientists are supposed to be smart, right?

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Indeed. In the best case, you'll be eventually proved wrong. And in this case the way to disprove their results was as easy as "test the cells they said were converted." Scientists are supposed to be smart, right?

Not necessarily. The key is to falsify results that are cool, but not groundbreaking or spectacular. Outside of the really big discoveries, no one is out there replicating studies in all of the normal journals out there. I suspect (with no evidence) that a not insignificant proportion of papers published include some kind of deliberate misconduct. Not a majority, mind you, but still a lot. There's simply no feasible way to detect it.

Science news would probably be more informative if only verified results were reported rather than any single interesting study. At least, it would be nice if there was a place you could go just for verified results (outside of textbooks).

A bunch of undergraduate friends of mine and I all saw this paper months ago and immediately called it into question because it made no freaking sense logically. Their protocol essentially killed the cells they were working with. What people need to realize is that in verifying these types of claims there are markers for various features. The authors did a great job designing the testing portion of their work, but their protocol created the presence of these markers despite not actually doing what they thought they achieved.

Scientists don't tend to try to falsify data, they're just under such a monumental amount of pressure to publish before their peers do as a means of 'staking their claim' that the end result is a bunch of iffy work getting thrown into the spotlight. More often than not it doesn't get vetted properly by the paper's editors in the first place.

This is why I'm skeptical of any game changer type of published research. The vetting process of the journals is insufficient nowadays, a lot of hogwash gets through the editorial process. I believe Ars has covered this issue extensively in the past.

I'm not sure it was better earlier. Estimating the level of errors in medicine seems difficult, with models all over the place. E.g. simple models say it isn't too bad [IIRC something like 10 - 20 % erroneous papers], others claim on still rather shaky ground it isn't, in which case it's bad [becomes more like 50 % erroneous papers, I think].

(Wakayama) He and a student in his laboratory did replicate the experiment independently[/b] before publication, after being well coached by Obokata. But since he moved to Yamanashi, he has had no luck.

That is the problem right there. Sure, biological material varies. But "coaching" to get results is invariably a sign of pseudoscience.

Quote:

Now throw an easy-on-the-eyes young woman? The Japanese media absolutely ate this up....and nothing is as cruel as the media (in any country) when it realizes it's been taken for a ride down the primrose path.

That is the other big problem here re research (and society in general). I already count two comments that discuss the totally irrelevant fact that one of the key figures is a woman. And of course connects it with her looks because it is done in almost all cases. [Not only misogynist, not only irrelevant, but would be totally boring if done in any other subject.]

It makes it harder on her when she works, when she succeeds and when she fails, because invariably society is still skewed to be misogynist. Which the comments here show. And it has absolutely nothing to do with the way research fails.

This is why I'm skeptical of any game changer type of published research. The vetting process of the journals is insufficient nowadays, a lot of hogwash gets through the editorial process. I believe Ars has covered this issue extensively in the past.

I'm not sure it was better earlier. Estimating the level of errors in medicine seems difficult, with models all over the place. E.g. simple models say it isn't too bad [IIRC something like 10 - 20 % erroneous papers], others claim on still rather shaky ground it isn't, in which case it's bad [becomes more like 50 % erroneous papers, I think].

Articles in the past used to be the culmination of YEARS of research. Nowadays if you're not publishing multiple papers a year then you're at risk for your work to get scooped by someone else. This pressure is what is driving tons of papers which are lacking sufficient supporting evidence, editorial review and overall quality of work. In one of my courses alone this year we reviewed about two dozen papers and found enough flaws in at least 50% of them to cast doubt on their conclusions. That's ignoring any common procedural flaws or poorly supported thesis work. Hell, a ton of papers are daisy-chained off of work which itself was done wrong... you get this perpetuation of misinformed scientists paraphrasing the same incorrect statements publication after publication.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Some scientists are idealistic and do it for knowledge, some scientists are ambitious and do it for fame and glory. It's especially prevalent in fields like genetic research that have a strong political-economic undercurrent.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Not only will someone try to replicate your results, the entire system scientists work on is based on them being able to do so. If you discover something people can't replicate, you are either lying, bad at your job, or wasted your time. None of those are desirable.

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Agreed, it's odd, I suppose maybe in some cases the intention could be to drive book sales or otherwise garner some fame.

I wondered if it's ever happened that someone has fudged results in hopes that by the time anyone catches on they'll have figured out what didn't work previously.

Actually, it shocks me that this doesn't happen more often. In biomedical research there is an insane amount of pressure on everyone to publish in what we call the "glamour mags", Science, Nature, Cell (aka CNS) and a few others. At some institutions, tenure decisions are directly determined by the impact factor of the journals you publish in. I was at a post-doc at a well regarded research institute that expected a CNS paper per year from each their faculty and a minimum of 3 NIH R01 grants (the major type of support for biomedical research), which are much easier to get when you routinely publish in CNS. CNS papers literally can make or break your career depending on the type of institution you are at.

Moreover, to actually get a job as a principal investigator/assistant professor you had better have a CNS paper of your own. I was hired as an assistant professor a few years back, and several of the places I interviewed at were very cognizant of the impact factor of my research (I have a couple of papers in CNS). Moreover, I have been on search committees for new faculty hires, and many of the top candidates have one or many high impact papers, CNS or a step below. While I like to think that search committees do not evaluate journal impact factor, it is hard to ignore a candidate who has primarily published in high impact journals and whose work is highly cited, they are often brilliant scientists. This does not mean that brilliant scientists never publish else where, they do, but there is a strong correlation.

This trickles down to grad students as well, whose PhD's are often linked to publishing, maybe not in CNS, but at least publishing, so that 6th year PhD student who was given a turd project is under enormous pressure to get results from their project.

It is actually amazing that given this strong tendency to cheat, that by and large, most scientists have extraordinarily high standards, and that the peer review process is very good at weeding out poor science and fraud. My department had a case of fraud by a PhD student a few years back. The good thing is that is was quickly caught, the student was discharged after a hearing with the University. It is highly unusual for fraud to make it to publication because there are so many quality checks along the way for most papers, but especially those that end up in high impact journals.

Am I the only one here genuinely scientifically interested in what's going on?

They did a genetic test and found cells that did *not* match the original mouse. They are also testing the other cells lines. It should be completely trivial to identify the originating strain.

We should note that the current "STAP" cell line does exist. The question is what are these cells? They are not simply any other stem cell line, as they have very different properties and media requirements. Certainly these are not HeLa contamination, because then that would be easy to identify in differentiation and gene expression assays. If we can verify that this cell line does have properties as claimed in the paper, then it is still a big deal and the question is how were these cells generated/enriched from its originating population.

It's a very peculiar mystery, and I think there's more than meets the eye.

It is actually amazing that given this strong tendency to cheat, that by and large, most scientists have extraordinarily high standards, and that the peer review process is very good at weeding out poor science and fraud. My department had a case of fraud by a PhD student a few years back. The good thing is that is was quickly caught, the student was discharged after a hearing with the University. It is highly unusual for fraud to make it to publication because there are so many quality checks along the way for most papers, but especially those that end up in high impact journals.

The problem is that we actually have no idea how prevalent this problem is and I suspect it's larger than most people recognize given the incredible pressure to publish perfect results. The cases that get weeded out or publicized are so obvious that it actually surprises me that researchers could be so stupid. I've seen in psychology, for example, where they'll describe public settings that don't exist or blatantly falsify data without even having the fake paperwork to back it up. A professor at U of T got caught when she faked data and her own graduate student reported her because the reported data didn't even come close to her own analyses. There have been similar issues in medicine and engineering in Canada. However, these are the dumb ones risking it all for short-term fame.

How many researchers are "massaging" their results to tell a prettier story? How many are just tweaking a couple of data points and their corresponding records? How many are dropping outliers or cases you don't hear about? How many did some small methodological tweak to bias their results? How many are doing just enough massaging to keep grant money coming in? The number of "smart" ways a research can massage their results is staggering, and I imagine most are bright enough to ensure that there is some plausible deniability when there is a failure to replicate. Indeed, this can actually help them by creating a debate and subsequently boost their citation count.

It is actually amazing that given this strong tendency to cheat, that by and large, most scientists have extraordinarily high standards, and that the peer review process is very good at weeding out poor science and fraud.

..and that's *before* they get published. Once they're published, it's open season on anything dodgy.

I think the high standards are because despite all the pressures, science is a truthogenic (ew) environment. Cheating is futile because it's reputation-destroying and is always, eventually, found out.

Nonetheless, this is why I adore science as a process. If it isn't testable or repeatable: it's just not the real deal. The scientific process worked here and the truth came out.

Publishing and peer review of articles require a certain amount of implicit trust in the integrity of the submitting authors. I think that's unavoidable so I do not agree with anyone blaming this on the journal. Peer review was never intended to be a replacement for the wider scientific community doing their part to test new information. It is intended to vet the article for serious errors in methodology or interpretation, not to rigorously repeat the study to be sure no one lied.

Truth provides no such accomodation to fraudsters so when the scientific community did their part (testing for repeatability) the shenanigans get revealed sooner or later. That's as it should be

The unfortunate consequence of this kind of behavior is that original research results cannot be believed. You can only begin to believe results once they have been confirmed.

Edit: ... and I don't even think Fraud is necessary for that to be the case. When you talk about groundbreaking research, you're applying a filter that selects results that are unusual. You should expect that even if the results were found by chance, you'd still get an effect of having many of the experiments be non-repeatable. Because supposed 20 scientists launch research projects on almost the same experiment and 19 of them get results that don't pass the criteria for significance and one does? Who's getting published?

I will never understand the motives of scientists to falsify results like this. Someone will come by and try to replicate the results, and when it doesn't work you're way worse off than you were not publishing anything.

I remember one case where the scientist methodically destroyed every mouse in the lineage he'd used for the experiment... which basically just led everyone to assume that the results were falsified.

Not only will someone try to replicate your results, the entire system scientists work on is based on them being able to do so. If you discover something people can't replicate, you are either lying, bad at your job, or wasted your time. None of those are desirable.

Yeah, I don't think we can necessarilly jump from "Results can't be duplicated" to "Scientist made up research". They may just have been bad at their job. I do like stories like this in that you see that the system can work to weed out bad research. I guess the problem is that the retraction will get no where near the publicity of the original paper, leading to a (more) ill-informed population.

Nonetheless, this is why I adore science as a process. If it isn't testable or repeatable: it's just not the real deal. The scientific process worked here and the truth came out.

Publishing and peer review of articles require a certain amount of implicit trust in the integrity of the submitting authors. I think that's unavoidable so I do not agree with anyone blaming this on the journal. Peer review was never intended to be a replacement for the wider scientific community doing their part to test new information. It is intended to vet the article for serious errors in methodology or interpretation, not to rigorously repeat the study to be sure no one lied.

Truth provides no such accomodation to fraudsters so when the scientific community did their part (testing for repeatability) the shenanigans get revealed sooner or later. That's as it should be

The unfortunate consequence of this kind of behavior is that original research results cannot be believed. You can only begin to believe results once they have been confirmed.

Edit: ... and I don't even think Fraud is necessary for that to be the case. When you talk about groundbreaking research, you're applying a filter that selects results that are unusual. You should expect that even if the results were found by chance, you'd still get an effect of having many of the experiments be non-repeatable. Because supposed 20 scientists launch research projects on almost the same experiment and 19 of them get results that don't pass the criteria for significance and one does? Who's getting published?

I recall one of my advisors from grad school telling me a story about some published research that no one could reproduce except the original research group. After years of research, they found out the sodium metal they were using as a reducing agent was contaminated with lithium. Once they announced that, everyone was able to repeat the synthesis.

It is actually amazing that given this strong tendency to cheat, that by and large, most scientists have extraordinarily high standards, and that the peer review process is very good at weeding out poor science and fraud.

..and that's *before* they get published. Once they're published, it's open season on anything dodgy.

I think the high standards are because despite all the pressures, science is a truthogenic (ew) environment. Cheating is futile because it's reputation-destroying and is always, eventually, found out.